Ok!

Day 39

08/10/12

I woke early and departed, looking for a quieter hotel, finding one which wasn’t surrounded by building sites. I met Stephanie, the French girl, for a late breakfast, unfortunately without her friends (who I was hoping to persuade to join me in trekking). I spent the rest of the day feeling pretty knackered, catching up on the blog and photos, using the web to research trekking and try to find trekking partners. At my hotel one of the other guests, an middle-aged American guy asked if I was going trekking. I said yes and he asked if I needed a walking stick. “As a matter of fact I do…”. The guy said he had just come back from the ABC trek and didn’t need his stick any more. He gave it to me, it was a strong, light wooden pole cut from a tree branch. He wanted to donate it to another trekker and I gratefully accepted his kind offer.

Lakeside strip

After a very late lunch I went for a walk along the path by the lake. Tibetan women were patrolling up and down selling fruit and jewelry. Families were washing their clothes in the murky-looking water and I saw a man bathing in it. Tourists and locals sat on the shoreline. I reached a scruffy campsite and a trotting buffalo which was mooing loudly. Fortunately it wasn’t on the war-path and went right past. Overhead a paraglider was very low and I wondered if he was in trouble. At the last minute he swung round and aimed at the path, coming to a running stop on it, his parachute settling behind him. Local kids ran towards him, laughing. Smooth moves.

The shoreline curved and I passed school children returning home. One boy walked with me, practicing his (good) English. Regularly along the shore there were little water pumps taking piped water from the lake over to nearby buildings. A bird of prey swooped down to a building close to me and I got my first good look at these impressive birds. I returned as the sun went down, and looked around to discover that the Annapurnas had come out of the cloud. They looked magnificent on the skyline.

The lake looked great too with the evening light and all the moored rowing boats and I took a load of pictures.

I headed to the hotel and climbed to the roof, where the skyline was impressive. Until, of course, someone started burning rubbish nearby (a usual disposal method) and the foul smoke blew across the view. I contacted Bhupen from Fantastic Nepal about my concerns with the mountain visibility for trekking – I’d only seen them on a few occasions. He said he’d send his trekking guide to chat with me tomorrow.

I decided to get a haircut. I hadn’t had one for two months and even before that it was quite long. It was a permanent permy afro I could no longer control. The experiment was over. I popped into a local hairdresser, haggled a price (you have to haggle for pretty much everything here!), and sat in a wooden stool. I asked to keep it a bit long and of course following the unwritten rule of hairdressing the guy chopped it really short. I told him to do what he wanted so I got a Nepali hairstyle with side parting. Then I had a wet shave, you have to trust you’re in safe hands when you have a bare razor grazing over your adam’s apple! It was finished off with a rather violent head massage which was actually pretty good. My head felt naked and I practically had to swim out of the place through all my locks, severed in their prime!

I met Stephanie and her friends, a Dutch guy called Rick and a German girl, at a restaurant for dinner. Stephanie was excited because her sister was in labour in France. We had a good chat and I tried to persuade them to come trekking with me. Unfortunately Stephanie was doing the epic Annapurna circuit, Rick didn’t have enough time and the girl was off to a monastery for spiritual healing. Gah! Christine joined us at the end of the evening, it was her last night here. I arranged with Stephanie to share a taxi next morning to Sarangkot, which has a renowned sunrise view, and wandered the streets to book one for us. We called it a night and I said goodbye to Christine. Just as I was about to turn in, I got a text from Stephanie saying she was ducking out of the trip tomorrow, she couldn’t sleep because her sister’s child had been born. Whilst I appreciated the situation I was annoyed because it was too late to cancel and taking the taxi alone was going to be expensive, exactly why I’d wanted to share in the first place!

Day 38

07/10/12

I was looking forward to a lie-in after the madness of Kathmandu. But Pokhara had other ideas. After 6pm the locals were already up and talking loudly, vehicles were driving around, and by 8pm the building sites opened up and the air reverberated with loud hammering and the rasping of buzz saws. Great. My hotel was conveniently right next to a construction site. I wondered if this was why it was so cheap here!

I met Christine for breakfast and we decided to visit the Peace Pagoda up the hill on the other side of the lake. At the lakeside were moored a lot of rowing boats and pedal boats. We hired a rowing boat and a boatman to take us across. He paddled us for about 20 minutes to the forested bank on the other side, passing other rowing boats and a little wooded island housing a little temple. We watched the paragliders swirling around, landing on a strip near the lake. Big pedal boats which could seat 10 people were moored around, but there were only two sets of pedals. Don’t want to draw the short straw on that baby! Motor boats are banned here so it’s quite peaceful, although you could still hear the beeps and building sites of Lakeside floating over the water.

Christine

We moored at a hotel on the wooded bank and followed a small path led behind it into the forest, heading steeply uphill. We continued for about half an hour up stone steps and dirt path. We spotted long-tailed macaque monkeys in the trees by the path and Christine with her fear of all animals legged it!

The forest was filled with twisting vines and occasionally a break in the trees gave us a glimpse of the lake and Lakeside beyond. The midday sun beat down upon on us. Near the top we suddenly heard movement. Out of the bushes, a big buffalo came charging down the hill towards us! It slowed when it saw us and and I saw it had a calf. I told Christine move quickly away – getting in the way of a mother in the animal world is a really bad idea. Thankfully the mother didn’t pursue us. More buffalo were running down the hill, crashing through the undergrowth through the trees and we heard men above them shouting. We saw them coming down the slope, herding the buffalo with sticks and shouts. One guy picked up a big football-sized rock and hurled it at one of the unfortunate beasts! No wonder they were mad!

We passed an old local woman carrying a traditional basket of grass on her back, wielding a sickle. She asked us “photo?” and we stopped to take pictures, giving her a small tip which is expected in these situations.

Up some steps past a hilltop restaurant, we were rewarded with a great view all around as we were now on the ridge. We walked up to the big white Peace Pagoda, a small garden sitting in front of it. From here you could see out over the Pokhara valley into the haze, the hills in all directions and the lake stretching out for miles. The Himalayas were unfortunately completely covered in cloud. Other tourists milled around. We walked up the pagoda steps and around the circumference, taking in the big golden Buddah statues inlaid into its white dome.

Further down the ridge we stopped for a cold drink at one of the restaurants, whilst Christine had a wee freak-out about the resident dog, who was very friendly. We got directions to a different the path down through the forest, which would bring us out south of Lakeside. It entered into some nice open forest, with a mossy floor. All you could hear were loud cicadas. We encountered more buffalo being herded along and the farmer helpfully pointed the right way, as the paths had petered out. Further down we followed three ladies carrying big bundles of firewood on their back.

We eventually emerged from the forest by some rice paddies and walked to a river gorge crossed by a suspension footbridge. Some locals were washing on a stony beach and women scrubbed clothes. A local guy approached us, asking me where I was from, which led to him offering his services as a guide. I took his number, noting it was a clever place to snare customers descending from the pagoda. We crossed the bridge and entered Pokhara’s streets, walking back to Lakeside in the strong sun for 45 minutes. Hungry, we dived into a nice Mediterranean themed restaurant called Byan Jan and I tucked into a BLT. Yum. The restaurant had a gravel garden with a nice view of the lake and would have been perfect if it wasn’t for the building site noise. Lakeside’s vaunted peace and quiet is completely shattered by the unchecked development, which locals tell me has been going on for years. It’s a shame the tourism industry doesn’t acknowledge the problems it causes to the atmosphere of the area and Lakeside is already almost a clone of characterless grey European beach strips.

It was so hot that we chilled out under the umbrella, eventually deciding to go out on the lake again before the sun set. We hired a boat and paddled out to the temple island (well, Christine did most of the work due to my shoulder, haha!). It was really busy here with hordes of Indian tourists and boats swarming the shores. The temple was being jet-washed by the police and there were pigeons everywhere. We boarded our mighty vessel again and went further out into the lake.

Who said the man has to row the woman?

As the sun went down light rays radiated from behind the clouds, and the hills became layered in shades of dark. Very nice. It was peaceful this far out and we only passed a few more rowers. A man on a boat of Indians shouted to ask to take our photo – weird for us to be the tourist attraction for once!

As it got dark, we paddled back. Later that evening I went to Moon dance to meet a girl called Stephanie, a French traveler I’d contacted online in my hunt to find some trekking companions. We talked over dinner. She wasn’t sure whether to do the Annapurna Base Camp trek I planned to do, or the big Annapurna circuit, which can take 2-4 weeks. Christine joined us later for drinks. Stephanie said she’d decide soon about the trek and I arranged to meet her the following day. Once again we stayed up drinking till the town shut down around us.

Day 37

06/10/12

A brain-numbing 5 o’clock start after a few hours sleep, as I had an early bus to Pokhara. It’s a city to the northwest of Kathmandu and is the hub for a lot of trekking and other activities, including the famous Annapurna mountain treks (which I’d never heard of before I came to Nepal!).

I met Bikrant, the younger guy from Fantastic Nepal at 6am in Thamel. He had brought my bus ticket and we took a cup of sweet tea from a street vendor before I hopped on the back of his motorbike and we rumbled to the bus stops nearby. Over twenty tourist buses were lined up at the side of the road. The street was lined with food sellers for the long journey ahead, tourists with huge packs and a few old beggars harassing everyone. I bought a hard-boiled egg and some extortionate fruit for breakfast and treated myself to a Snickers. I don’t think I’ve had chocolate for a month, it was gooood!

The tourist bus was basic but comfy enough, all seats booked, and we left Kathmandu’s outskirts within an hour. We climbed narrow roads up the green valley, past lots of terrace farming surrounded by wooded hills. The road was full of big trucks and buses. Traffic jams impeded our progress whenever other vehicles broke down, common on this steeper section, the narrow two-lane road getting easily blocked. The views across the valley became impressive as we wound up and up the forested hillsides. The road was occasionally lined with flimsy looking barriers along steep drops. I doubt they’d stop a bus at full pelt. We went through small towns and villages, and stopped at a shack for a loo break. I have the curse of being pee shy so despite really needing to relieve myself I couldn’t go! It’s something I am going to have to fix (no idea how) if I’m going to survive these long bus journeys!

A big river emerged from the trees to the right and we followed it, skirting the valley edge for the next few hours. At a rocky section we pulled to a stop. The bus had broken down. As the buses are old and rickety this wasn’t too surprising and I was already accustomed to “Nepali time” – things get done when they get done, you get there when you get there. Just go with it. We piled off into the baking heat, we’d stopped in a wee village with a shop and garage. The staff jacked up the bus and took off the left double-wheels, changing one of them out. The garage staff took off the tyres and beat away at the rims with a hammer. On top of the garage shack were scattered inner tubes of all shapes and sizes, clearly they get a lot of business on this busy highway.

Breakdown vacation spot

I walked towards the river, at the bottom of a steep bank was a stony beach below, the wide, fast river was dotted with big rocks and a cliff on the far side. Soon some local guys came running over to me and jogged down the slope. One of them dived into the river and started swimming across. The current was strong but he swam fast, making it over to the rocks on the other side. A big group of locals came over to watch. I wondered what was going on, and soon a large cylindrical object came floating down the river. The swimmer dived in ahead of it, swam out to it and managed to intercept it. He dragged it behind him with one hand, and clambered out. The object was a drum of some kind. Must have been important to be worth the effort, I wondered how it got there in the first place? The locals peeled away, the drama over.

You can see the swimmer at the other side of the river

I got chatting to a fellow passenger, a balding Israeli man in his 40s who was travelling with his 10 year old son. He was taking him on an easy trek up at Pokhara. We talked about the compulsory military service in Israel. This guy had been in plenty of combat, been under fire, sounded like he’d shot people himself, in the height of the troubles. He’d been an artillery officer. He was such a nice guy it was hard to imagine him dealing out death. He said he’d actively sought a combat role, you don’t want to see combat it’s easy to secure a desk job for your compulsory service.

The Israeli combo

The bus wheel was changed and we got underway. The girl I was next to was a 24 year old Norwegian named Christine. She’s a travelling veteran who despite her age has already backpacked around a good chunk of the world in-between studying. She’s been to loads of cool places and was afraid of nothing travelling-wise except animals, her first trip had been solo around the Ukraine, hardly an easy beginners choice! We stopped at a buffet restaurant overlooking the river for a late lunch. The Israeli’s son, Rafi, was thrilled to hear about my background in computer games and thrilled in telling me everything he knew on the subject. I saw some locals along the road, dressed distinctively differently to anyone I’d seen in Kathmandu.

We continued, the valley opening out to big mud flats by the river. The towns we passed through were rural and filled with tractors chugging along. Painted adverts on building walls by the roadside were everywhere, reminding me a lot of Africa. Man-carved cliffs by the river stood alongside mining operations. As we entered Pokhara, the road got a lot worse and we jolted around all over the place. The city seemed busy though not as much as Kathmandu. The familiar vehicle horns and bustle of street stalls assaulted the senses. We arrived at the bus park and my Israeli friend suggested we walk to Lakeside, the tourist area, rather than get a taxi. Christine joined us.

I lumbered along behind the others with my bags and duff arm, as Rafi relentlessly babbled about video games. He’s a nice kid but he couldn’t stop! After 15 minutes we reached the edge of the Pokhara’s lake. Dense forest rose on the other side and rowing boats paddled around as the sun went down.

We entered Lakeside, a very long and busy tourist strip. In the distance you could see big hills and above them a cluster of paragliders, at least 20, swooping around in circles. By this point I had to ask Rafi to let up on his one-sided conversation, I couldn’t concentrate! It didn’t deter him much and he continued. I followed the others to their hotel, Rafi’s dad had decided to stay at Christine’s choice. We climbed to its roof garden and admired the sunset view. Over the rooftops you could see the Peace Pagoda, a big monument perched atop the forested ridge over the lake, and the hills surrounding Pokhara to the other side. Then the clouds beyond the hills drifted away for a few minutes and we got our first glimpse of the *real* mountains. The huge white caps poked out from the clouds and we were awed. It was great, my first look at the Annapurnas!

The Annapurnas reveal themselves

I said my goodbyes, this place was beyond my budget and found myself a decent hotel after an hour of hunting. Every side street off the main strip is packed with accommodation. The prices in Lakeside compared to Kathmandu are a bargain. I was in relative luxury for me, with a hot shower, carpeted floor, double bed and private bathroom. Lakeside was more chilled out than Kathmandu but there were a lot of building sites, wherever you were you could hear hammering and buzz saws, destroying the relative peace. Tourists were everywhere, most toting hiking gear. A lot of them were Asian. There were also a lot of Indian tourists who took particular interest in shopping.

I met Christine for dinner and then we went to a cool bar called Moon Dance. Lots of trekking parties were eating here. We enjoyed some good happy hour cocktails, but as everything closed down in the strip at only 10pm we were forced to go home early, arranging to meet in the morning to do some exploring together.